Five minutes earlier, Dad and I were watching his alma mater get eliminated from the college basketball tournament. Our team lost in the final moments, the season ending on our family room television. We should have won; Dad blamed the coach. I defended the coach again, and Dad called me a fag.
I left the room, telling him to fuck off. The couch squeaked to tell me Dad stood. I kept walking, through the kitchen and out the front door — Dad's heavy breaths revving behind me and pushing me out of the house.
Dad stomps to me and now we are facing each other in the driveway.
His hands are raised. He tells me I have a big mouth. My fingernails are burrowing into my palms, and now my hands are blocking my chin. Mom screams from the front door for us to come inside, that someone will call the cops. I've worried her. For a moment I feel guilty for saying that to him.
Dad circles; we are a portrait of bare-knuckle boxers. The driveway gravel grinds under my shoes, like it did when Dad taught me how to dribble a basketball. Dad is swearing. Dad is spitting. My closed mouth is sandpaper.
I decide not to punch if he swings. I will let him win our first fight. He's looking at the driveway like he knows, and I lower my arms and watch him walk to the house.
Kyle Beswick is a graduate student in the Antioch University MFA program in Creative Writing. He holds a B.A. in English from Cornell University, where he mentored under Dan McCall and published poetry in the Risley Revue, a Cornell University publication. Kyle lives in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he plays bass guitar in the rock and roll band Seneca Hawk. When Kyle is not reading or writing or playing music, he is playing video games with his little brothers and enjoying his girlfriend's great cooking.